Dr. Arthur J. RagauskasIt is anticipated that the biofuels industry will have a dramatic impact on our lives, much like the petroleum industry. Alternative fuels from renewable cellulosic biomass— plant stalks, trunks, stems, and leaves—are expected to significantly reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil while enhancing national energy security and decreasing the environmental impacts of energy use. Research is currently focused on accelerating the environmental and commercial viability of biofuel production.

The University of Tennessee’s Arthur Ragauskas is one of the notable scientists who are redefining the frontiers of bioenergy research in the quest for an economically feasible and sustainable biofuel industry.

OSTI's mission is to advance science and sustain technological creativity by making R&D findings available and useful to DOE researchers and the public. As part of this commitment to America’s science and technology future, we strive to place information in consumers’ hands, specifically, at their fingertips. Rapidly changing technology and increasing demands from smartphone-toting consumers drive new paths to DOE research using new social media tools.

DOE supports the use of social media as an avenue to uphold “open government principles of transparency, participation and collaboration”, expand the conversation on energy issues, and communicate with the rising/next generation of researchers. OSTI regularly shares information through interactive and user-driven social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. OSTI makes social media posts not only about our scientific and technical information (STI) collections and search tools, but also retweets and shares STI-related posts from other DOE program offices and across the 17 DOE national laboratories.

The Department of Energy recently issued its latest Open Government Plan, and the document recognizes the DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) for advancing open government and the principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration by making scientific and technical information (STI) publicly available.

On his first day in office in January 2009, President Obama signed the Memorandum of Transparency and Open Government, which called on agencies to provide “an unprecedented level of openness in government” and instructed the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to prepare a directive to “establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration” throughout the federal government. The Administration’s open government directive subsequently issued by OMB required each executive departments and agency to prepare and issue an open government plan in 2010 and every two years thereafter.

OSTI grew out of the post-World War II initiative to make the declassified scientific research of the Manhattan Project as freely available to the public as possible, and throughout its 67-year history, OSTI has built very large collections of energy-related STI, emanating primarily from the work of DOE and its predecessor agencies. Today OSTI makes these STI collections available through sophisticated web products, and its R&D results are accessed more than 400 million times annually.

Image: N. Watson, L. Thompson, MITGenomes of individual organisms and systems of organisms contain the information and operating capabilities that determine structure and function across multiple scales of biological organization. These complex systems hold the secrets of life. Because we do not yet have a full understanding of how a living system works, and how these organisms interact with and modify their environments, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Genomic Science Program is working to achieve a predictive, system-level understanding of plants, microbes, and biological communities. This program is providing the foundational knowledge underlying biological approaches to producing biofuels, sequestering carbon in terrestrial ecosystems, and cleaning up contaminated environments.

The National Library of EnergyBeta (NLEBeta), a gateway to information across the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is taking on an expanded role in providing access to DOE scientific and technical information (STI) with the retirement of the federated search product Science Accelerator. In addition, the NLEBeta, launched in February 2013, has a redesigned home page and new features that makes it easier to use than ever.

Developed by DOE’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), the NLEBeta search tool makes it easy for American citizens to find and access information about the Department from across the DOE complex nationwide, without knowing DOE’s organizational structure.